


drabble #36

by basementhero



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, general silliness, relaxed boyfriends, unspecified alternate universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-03-01 12:46:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13295187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/basementhero/pseuds/basementhero
Summary: There's a mystery afoot, and Harry...might solve it...eventually.





	drabble #36

“Of course I’m still watching,” Harry mutters to himself, righteously put off by the unasked-for interruption to Bake Off.

All it takes is one click to resume his chosen programming, but he’s feeling awfully lazy for the amount of space between his arm, tucked comfortably within the confines of a fuzzy blanket, and his laptop, resting on the coffee table across from his head on the sofa. He’s worked out the positioning just  _so_ —line of sight uninterrupted, screen a healthy distance for his eyes, and limbs all organized comfortably in the limited cushion space available. He’d have to unwrap himself from his cocoon, sit up, possibly even  _stand_  to properly reach his touchpad, and then he’d have to completely rearrange himself back into that illusive state of totally-at-ease.

No, he thinks. There is another way.

“Niall!”

No answer. Odd.

“Niall! Help!”

Again, not a peep from his flatmate-slash-life-partner. Harry hadn’t noticed him leaving, and he was usually very observant about that sort of thing. Hard not to be, when Niall rarely—if ever—leaves without letting Harry know when he will probably be back with a kiss and a little wave. Harry feels certain that he’s received no such farewell, yet here he lay, no boyfriend apparently within hearing distance.

He gets up to let Netflix know he’s still viewing, thanks, and he’s quite unhappy about it, too. Still miffed, even, when the front door opens two episodes later, letting in all the cold air and Niall as well.

Pout in place, Harry calls, “Where’ve you been?”

“Just, er...picking something up.”

By the sound of it, Niall strips off his winter coat and boots at the door. Harry expects the other man to join him in the living room, but Niall, apparently not one for expectations today, scurries right down the hallway to their bedroom without so much as a hello. Harry would be concerned if not for the horrendous looking sponge cakes about to be judged before his very eyes.

Niall is suspiciously distracted at dinner, if one were to be on the lookout for suspicious things, which Harry is. He alternates between wolfing down his food a bit faster than usual and looking over his shoulder as if called by a siren song further into the flat. There are no bewitching women to be found, so Harry’s quite stumped.

“What are you doing?”

Niall, startled, whips his head back around to face forward like a guilty child caught raiding the cookie jar. “What?”

“You keep looking over your shoulder.” Harry waves his fork vaguely at the shoulder in question. “Something back there?”

“No! I’m—I have a call coming in, s’all. Can’t miss it. Work and all,” the Irishman says with some level of conviction. Not a particularly  _high_  level, but enough to let him off the hook.

Harry doesn’t ask why someone from work would be calling on a Sunday evening. Perhaps, subconsciously, he knows he won’t get a real answer. They both tuck back into their dinner and Niall’s behavior isn’t brought up again.

Harry forgets about his boyfriend’s weirdness for a while: work, evenings out with visiting friends, and an acceptable amount of affection from Niall push his questions firmly to the back-burner. If he wakes up at 2 a.m. some nights and finds one side of the bed empty, he hardly remembers to bring that up in the daylight hours. Varying sounds of frustration and euphoria drifting out from odd places—the loo, the fire escape, the linen closet—are ignored because Harry’s curious but he’s not  _that_  curious. He thinks maybe Niall’s getting in to West End with the mumblings he’s overheard about Link. Odd that Niall would want to hide that when he knows Harry will sing and dance horribly along to Hairspray any day.

A month (give or take a few days) since the first symptoms of Niall’s mysterious preoccupation, Harry finds himself in possession of an unexpected afternoon off. He considers milling about the shops or going for lunch for approximately as long as it takes for him to gather his things and exit the office building in which he works, at which point the bitter cold has him walking briskly in the direction of home.

He knows something is off when he sees Niall’s coat still on its hook and the man’s shoes at the door, completely clean and not at all covered in anti-ice precaution salt like Harry’s poor, mistreated boots. Niall never misses work; he loves his job and is too afraid of his boss’s evil eye to ask for a day off unless he’s in hospital or someone’s died. That he has evidently not left the flat means he is either very ill—in which case Harry feels that he should have been called—or very stupid.

A plausible option, the latter, seeing as Harry immediately spots the man in question on the sofa, feet kicked up on the coffee table and back hunched uncomfortably over his lap. Niall isn’t doubled over in pain, it’s clear; no, he’s furiously jamming his thumb at the side of a rectangular screen. He’s so invested in his own little world that he hasn’t even noticed Harry come home. Harry watches him get progressively more aggressive, to the point that his thumb will surely break, until what started as passionate muttering raises to a volume that can only be described as a roar.

“No no no no no no—Fuck!”

Niall goes to throw his toy at the ground, thinks better of it, and gently drops it onto the cushion beside him with a huff.

“Having fun?” the taller man chuckles.

Niall nearly falls off the couch, the picture of grace and poise. “Harry! Don’t  _scare_  me like that!”

“You’re in for a scare when you show up to work tomorrow,” Harry points out sagely.

The blush on Niall’s face tells Harry everything he needs to know. This little habit of his—and Harry’s really still not sure what it even is—is a source of great shame and incredibly bad decisions.

Niall points accusingly at his device. “I just needed to finish this bit and then I’ll be almost done with this main quest, but these Yiga bastards keep blowing the whistle on me.”

“I think I understood about two words of that. Come again?”

“Zelda. I’m playing Zelda, Harry. I bought a Switch and I’m playing the Legend of Zelda.”

Harry’s eyebrow reaches his hairline. “The video game?”

“Of course the video game!”

“I didn’t know you were into gaming.”

“I’m  _not_. I bought this bloody thing on a whim and now I can’t stop  _playing_ it.” Niall slumps in place, defeated. He adds an afterthought, quietly, “I have to  _win_.”

Harry can’t help but laugh. He should probably still be confused, or at least exasperated that Niall played hooky from work for something so silly, but seeing his boyfriend so put out by a game just tickles the funny bone that he has in the same general region reserved for being utterly smitten with the ridiculous man in front of him.

“Quit laughing,” Niall laughs himself, unable to keep a straight face.

“Shove over,” Harry says instead and plops himself on the sofa. “I’ll have a go.”

Niall looks mildly offended by the suggestion. “You don’t know a thing about this game, Harry!”

“How hard could it be?”

Harry allows the poor hero to die in what might be the fastest time in (un)recorded history.


End file.
